This summer, from June 9th to August 26th, from 12pm to 6pm, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm’s Hot Dog Bus will distribute free hot dogs to anyone who agrees to eat it. The Hot Dog Bus, which will be parked at Brooklyn Bridge Park, is presented by the Public Art Fund. The project’s goal is to both get people to eat (is this really a goal we need?) and to think of the human body as a piece of art, specifically as a sculpture. According to the Public Art Fund site, “it is the participation of the viewer that ‘completes’ the work.”

Photo courtesy of the Public Art Fund

Wurm told Architectural Digest, “I’ve always addressed gaining or losing weight as a sculptural work, because it’s a work on volumes, so the sausage could be a key component of that.” He continues, “My work is a critical response on consumerism and globalization and all these questions that arise. The bus has a performative and social component of serving food.”

The artist transformed a vintage Volkswagen Microbus into a shiny, yellow, almost greasy looking globule of fat, suggesting that putting on the pounds could be a way of sculpting our own bodies. He had other versions of the bus, he charmingly refers to the series as the “Fat Bus.”

After learning that the Volkswagen car plant in Germany has “currywurst” sausages on their employee cafeteria menu, Wurm began the project in 2015 in conjunction with an exhibit he had at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, not far from the Volkswagon plant.

Supposedly, the Hot Dog Bus changes identity wherever it goes. In Vienna, he served Frankfurter sausages and in New York he serves hot dogs, “simply because it is a national food icon in the United States.” Clearly, he should take this bus on the road and explore all the different varieties of hot dogs our country has to offer. The midwest is a callin’!